Even in Death and After Death
by Halrax
Summary: Various dead characters from the world of Attack on Titan gather together and react to the show. Heavy manga spoilers. inspired by Power to Strive by ii-Phoenix-ii.


_**Disclaimer: Attack on Titan and its characters belong to Hajime Isayama. **_

_**Warning: Heavy manga spoilers**_

Marcel was dead.

He was fairly certain about that. He could only vaguely recall the event itself, but given the context of where he had been, it's not hard to surmise what happened. He had been talking with Reiner when a small Titan appeared from where it had been hiding underneath the soil. The Titan had reached its arm out for Reiner, but Marcel was the one who got eaten alive.

He wondered who it had been before. It may have been the luckiest Titan on Earth, he mused. The vast majority of Titan shifters were Pure Titans for under 2 minutes, since the powers were handed down in a controlled environment. Although all Pure Titans on Paradis longed for human flesh in order to return them to their human forms, this Titan was probably the only one who actually pulled it off. It had killed him, and so he was –

Where was he? Marcel sat up from where he had been lying and looked around. At first glance he appeared to be in a vast desert underneath the night sky. But as he stood up and brushed the sand of his clothes, several things came to light that refuted this hypothesis. First, deserts at night were bitterly cold, but the place he was in seemed almost to lack temperature, as if the concept of heat didn't exist at all. Second, although there were many stars glimmering in the sky, none of them matched constellations that were found on Earth. Third, the substance he was walking on wasn't exactly sand. It looked and felt similar to sand, but it clumped together naturally, reminiscent of mud or clay, though it lacked the moisture one would think necessary for cohesion. Finally and most importantly, (this fact was for some reason struggling to sink in), _he had been eaten by a Titan_. There's no reason for him to be alive, or thinking, or feeling, and this couldn't have been his real body since his real body had been crushed between two giant rows of teeth, and –

Marcel blinked. Why had he been so worried? The fact that he was dead, that he was –

Marcel shrugged. It's not anything to get too worried about. He was here now, and that's what mattered. He was here, wherever this was, because he had died, because he had been eaten by a –

Marcel opened his eyes. He was lying at the bottom of a large sand dune. How long had he been there? How long had he been resting, or walking, or lying, or whatever he had been doing? How long had been trapped in this place, because he –

– because he died. That was why he was here, in this desert realm, all alone. That was the truth. There's no point in hiding from it. He stood up and looked around. There didn't seem to be any sort of a features to go to, any sort of path set out for him. Marcel glanced around for a few more seconds, picked a direction, and starting walking. This path he would make for himself.

Marcel wasn't tired. If he were still alive, he would have been. He would have collapsed from exhaustion hours or days or weeks or – a long time ago. But Marcel wasn't tired. He wasn't even sure he wasn't going in circles. He had been walking for so long that would have despaired of ever finding anything in this wilderness, had he been capable of feeling despair. The stars shone down from the heavens, and the not-sand rested at the bottom. He was walking on an endless journey, a journey with no destination, no path to guide his way, no goal to look to, no

Marcel walked into a door. Initially his emotions were somewhat muted, until the reality began to sink in. He had found something, a residence, a place where others might be, a place where –

There was nothing behind the door. It didn't attach to a building. It just stood there, bottom set into a gently sloping dune, with nothing to support it or explain why it should be there. Nothing, that is, except the wooden placard set into its stone surface, bearing the name "Marcel Gaillard". He wondered for a second who it was for, until he remembered. That was him. He was Marcel Gaillard. He was a warrior of Marley, and came from Liberio, and had a brother and parents and comrades who he hadn't seen in forever. "Where were they", he wondered, until he remembered. They were alive. He was the one who died. He was eaten, and sent here, and left alone until he walked forever and ever –

The door. The door was for him. He had been wandering about in the desert, never finding anything, because the only thing for him to find was this door. Which attached to nothing. Marcel looked down for a second, and then angrily punched the useless wooden door as hard as he could. It swung open.

Behind the door was a small stone booth, just large enough for one person to stand comfortably. This booth did not exist on the back of the door. Marcel walked around the doorway, and on this side of the doorway a similar warp in space appeared, showing the same small booth, or at least an identical one. He supposed he was meant to go inside, but if there was no way out, he'd be trapped there forever. That would be even worse than the desert, where at least he was able to move freely. Though to be fair, there was nothing else in the desert for him. This was the only clue he had. He walked into the booth. Nothing happened. With the recognition that he may never see that thrice cursed desert ever again, he smiled, and shut the door. Nothing happened. The smile faded. Was there something he had missed? Some lever on the inside? This had to be it, right? The destination that he wandered for so long to find? Marcel thought for a second, then decided to open the door. He didn't see the desert.

On the other side of the door was a small, comfortable room with warm lighting, carpeting, 2 couches and a few armchairs. To the far end of the room was a small side table holding up several notepads and pencils as well as a small box with a large red button on the top. The table also appeared to have some writing on it, though it was here to see what with this angle. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. On this side of the wall, there were several doors, similarly made of stone with a wooden marker at head height. Except on these doors, there were no names written down. There were just numbers, in increasing order, though without much pattern: 2, 13, 25, 36, 37, 55, 59. On his door, there was a large 0.

Walking over to the other side of the room, he tossed the notebooks and pencils onto one of the couches, set the weird block off to the side, and started reading the words on the table.

**This is a place in which the dead can still view the world of the living, for as long as the story of humanity lasts. The button-box is to play and pause the story. The notepads are to take notes on. They won't help you. This is the time to say goodbye, before the end.**

Marcel looked up at the wall the couches were facing. Most of it was dominated by a large mirror. The way the couches and armchairs were facing indicated that the 'world of the living' would be shown on the mirror. Marcel let out a deep sigh. He was dead. He wasn't sure for how long he had been dead, there may or may not be any correlation between time passed in the desert and time passed in the real world. If this was to be his fate, so be it. At least he'd have guests. Marcel Gaillard, after a long and terrible journey, sat down on the couch, picked up a notepad and pencil, and pushed the button.

_**Author's note: If you managed to make it to the end of this chapter, good job. You now know what the premise of this story is, at least better than the bizarre self-indulging crack of a first chapter I had up before would have given you. If you were one of the like three people who saw that, I'm sincerely sorry. This first chapter was a bit dark, and doesn't really have any relation to the main story of Attack on Titan, but I felt it was necessary to establish the premise of the story. **_

_**If you're reading this story, then you've probably already read Power To Strive by ii-Phoenix-ii. If you haven't, go read that first and come back here. They're a much better writer than I am. The reason I mention it is that it is in fact so well written that it has inspired a number of other fanfics with a similar premise, such as Path of Warriors by NameTaken15 or Watching Attack on Titan – JUNIOR HIGH by NguyetMieu. The point is that this is my attempt to do something similar, with the twist that everyone reacting to the anime is dead, or at least will be dead by the time they start watching. **_

_**I sometimes feel that all these fanfics have this implication that after the reacting is done with, the characters will have to do something with the new information they've been given. In this story, after the reactions are over, the story ends, by definition. Though given my projected update schedule (completely sporadic), it will be a very long time before the story is finished, especially since I'm incorporating all of season 4 once it comes out, forcing me to add more doors.**_

_**Observant readers will be able to predict most or all of the characters that will appear in this fic. However, I'm only adding tags once the character appears, up to the arbitrary limit of four characters that fanfiction offers, for some reason. There'll be more than just four characters, obviously.**_

_**A few more things to note:**_

_**There will be no romantic pairings of any kind. It doesn't really fit with the story and I'm not a good enough writer to write these things correctly.**_

_**Regarding the seven OVAS, they'll be shown roughly at the time at which they take place in the story, with the exception of A Choice with No Regrets, which will be shown as an interlude at the end of Season 1. That means that Distress, the Tortuous Curse of Youth, and Ilse's Notebook will be shown between episodes 3 and 4, in that order, and the two Lost Girls episodes will be shown between episodes 16 and 17. **_

_**In the interests of avoiding the subbed vs dubbed debate, all dialogue (for the first two seasons) will be taken from Power to Strive, though the descriptions will obviously differ. The dialogue there matches neither subbed nor dubbed, but there's some interesting phrases I want people to react to the specific wording of, and so I'm sticking with that translation. You'll see what I mean in episode 2.**_

_**Also, if you found this chapter unbearably painful to read, but enjoy the premise, I'm going to go back and edit past chapters once I get better at actually writing fiction. So check back in like three years and see what it's like then. (That was sarcasm. It'll probably be more like 4 years. This fic is probably going to have like a hundred chapters. This is going to take a while.)**_

_**Finally, please review. It's important not just because it lets me know what I'm doing wrong with my writing, but it shows that I actually have an audience which expects me to write these chapters, which helps me get them out much quicker. **_


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